The door was massive.
Absolutely massive. It took up one whole side of the spacious cavern. Alan could only [Sense] the outer layer, but somehow he imagined it was a dark red color, made of thick and heavy iron. It was far from the first time he had spied on the giant closed gates. It had become his mystery. His goal. The only clue he had to an exit from these wretched caves.
He had been wandering these lizard infested tunnels for what must be months now.
It was hard to gauge time in the darkness, but he had just turned sixteen a week or so back which gave him a much-needed frame of reference. He had been expecting the change for a while now, but it was still a shock when it happened. It had been a year and several months since he had been forced into his prison. It was a long time to live as he did. His life during this period was one of darkness and danger and more than anything, one of loneliness.
But if all went well, soon he would be done with it.
Those first days in the caves had been astonishingly severe. After losing [Endure] he had almost gone mad. Mad with grief, with pain, with hunger and disease. He didn’t regret accepting [Sustain] at this point, but those first couple of weeks after had almost broken him. Still he had pulled through. He had managed to overcome.
He had clung to his desire for freedom and his longing for revenge. He refused to let himself be beaten before he had made the instigators of this tragedy suffer.
After he had somewhat healed up and gotten more used to his circumstances, he had spent a long time wandering through the tunnels. He would hide from the lizards, occasionally ambushing them in the dark for food and supplies. His only goal had been to stay alive, and if he could, to keep going upwards towards the surface.
As the days went by, he had begun to have a sneaking suspicion that he was instead going much deeper into the earth. The caves felt strange, almost alive in a way. Sometimes he would be in a tunnel that clearly headed towards higher ground, but when he would turn around and check, he would [Sense] that he had actually moved further below. In his darkest thoughts, he imagined the earth was playing tricks on him, trying to swallow him whole.
Everything had changed when [Sense] reached level 6. It was at this point that he had gained the ability to [Sense] ambient Mana in the atmosphere.
Supposedly since level 5 he should have been able to do this. It clearly stated in the description: "By extending your Mana beyond yourself you have gained the ability to recognize ambient Mana and Mana within yourself." Except Alan had no idea what that meant.
Of course, having nothing but time on his hands, that did not stop him from trying. It was an odd feeling, trying to use [Sense] to track the Mana that [Sense] consumed by being activated. He figured if he expended his MP by using Skills he should be able to [Sense] some flow of Mana within himself. It was a place to start, and he was almost shocked when it had worked. Just barely he felt a shifting of density, a slight distortion of space inside of himself as he drained his MP. Just barely. He admitted that he might have been imagining it.
He had no luck at all recognizing Mana outside of himself. But still, he kept at it. He had plenty of time, and he was discovering he could be pretty patient about such things.
When [Sense] hit level 6 his attempts had made a breakthrough.
He had created various mental exercises to go through with [Sense] when he was bored and had nothing better to do. After his recent level increase, he had been particularly excited to try them out and see if he noticed any difference. He started by using the Skill as he normally did. He concentrated his mind in the way he had done many times before. It involved a slight mental tightening that once focused he could spread outside of himself and into the world around him. It was a familiar feeling by now.
He conceptualized his perception expanding outwards. Not just a vague thought, but a rock-solid mental image that took into account every detail, every curve, and every angle of his consciousness. This had once forced his mind to its limits but now came as natural as breathing.
At this point, instead of expanding [Sense] out further as he would in a normal situation, he doubled it back into itself, to get a feeling for the Mana within his body. His mental map could not falter in any way during this process. And there it was. It was slight, but he felt it. A ripple in his essence. A ripple that moved with his perception, fueling it. Straining his concentration, he solidified the feeling and tried to expand it outwards as well. Sweat was forming on his forehead and his brow furrowed with focus.
Something in his Mana "caught" for lack of a better term, and the density of his perception shifted. He felt he was almost there and his body began to shake with the intensity of his concentration. He tried to re-expand his understanding once more bringing his Mana along with it. Slowly... Carefully...
His Mana exploded outwards in a burst, and his MP plummeted instantly to zero. At the same time, a throbbing agony shot through his mind causing his head burst with pain almost making him black out. The single-minded focus from before slipped in his head and shattered. He clutched at the ground and struggled to remain conscious. A wide and uncontrollable grin broke out on his face.
It had worked. He had expanded his Mana outside of himself.
From there he had taken to practicing [Sense] with a vengeance, and after several days, he was finally able to expand his Mana outwards without injuring himself. It was hard to maintain, and it leaked from his control draining his MP rapidly, but he could do it. And once expanded outside of his own body, through it, he could perceive the flow of Mana in the atmosphere itself. It was a vague feeling, but it hadn't taken him long to realize the ambient Mana around him was moving in a specific direction. Like an invisible current in space.
Of course, he followed it.
That had been perhaps a month or two past. The Mana appeared to flow upwards through the tunnels. Even when it felt like he was headed down, or pushing deeper underground, he would turn back and somehow he would be at a higher elevation than before. He didn't understand how the caves worked, but he began to trust the flow of Mana around him. He followed it.
He hid from the lizard tribes, moving around them if he could, and through them if he had to. He would raid or ambush weaker members when his supplies ran low. He would explore their territories and study them, but he never stopped following the flow of Mana. He never stopped moving towards what he hoped and believed was the surface.
And it had led him to the door.
It was the first man-made thing he had sensed since his escape, and it filled him with something almost like hope. It was more massive than anything he had ever experienced and oddly enough [Sense] could not penetrate it. It was somewhat concerning. Whenever he tried to use [Sense] on the structure, it felt like the world just ended. True [Sense] was more difficult to utilize through walls or any sort of barrier, but this was different. He could [Sense] the outer layer, a thick and metal frame, but going deeper was met with... nothingness.
The main point was that the door was something new. Something different. And if all went well, soon he would finally know what lay on the other side. He refocused on his targets.
At the foot of the giant door stood fifteen lizard shamans and thirty brood warriors. He had made up names for the various types of lizards he had encountered after being down here for so long.
The brood warriors were a completely different beast than the foot soldiers he had encountered at first. They stood four or five meters tall and were hulks of pure muscle. He had sensed them in action and had no desire to face even one of the creatures, let alone the thirty that stood guarding the doorway.
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The shamans were another matter entirely. They could be devastating, but most of their Skills seemed to be less focused on single targets and more useful against larger groups. Their Skills appeared to be centered on manipulating the earth around them. He had sensed one move the very structure of the caves once, rock and dirt surging from the ground, crushing dozens of other lizardmen in its wake.
The lizards fought often which gave him plenty of time to observe their capabilities from a distance. As it turned out, the lizardmen did not like each other. Frequent battles and attacks by other lizard tribes were just a part of daily life for the creatures.
Alan had become somewhat of an expert of lizard society. The main take away was that they were extremely violent.
Not counting the battles between the various tribes, even lizards of the same tribe often attacked and killed each other over mating, loot, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all. There was, however, a rough hierarchy in place and the shamans and brood warriors stood at the top. The foot soldiers he had first encountered were actually quite weak. As he had recovered his health and stamina in the caves over time, he realized what he had taken for deadly lizard warriors were in fact the weakest segment of lizard society. Aside from their sheer speed and numbers, they were hardly worth worrying about anymore. They had instead become his primary food source.
Of course, he still avoided direct confrontations. He would attack swiftly and quietly. If he did his job right, the creatures would get no chance to retaliate before they died.
Whatever the reasons, no matter the type, the lizards were violent and territorial. In fact, it was this violence and animosity between the tribes that part of Alan's plans hinged upon. He didn't know what lay beyond the door, it was always guarded by a ridiculous number of lizards, but it was his only clue, the only thing he had found that might lead to an exit.
He dreamed of seeing light. He dreamed of fresh air. He dreamed of other people.
However, he was getting ahead of himself. He admitted he was nervous. It had been too long. He had been hiding out in this cavern for what he counted as at least two whole days since he had set his plan into motion. He had expected it to happen by now, but the cavern remained tediously quiet as the brood warriors paced the ground below. Perhaps the lizards were not able to discern different tribes purely through scent?
He would wait a bit longer.
He was absent-mindedly running through [Sense] exercises in his head when he heard something strange. At first, he thought it must be his imagination playing tricks on him, but more and more distinctly he began to hear noises coming from the main entrance of the cavern. The distant sound of fighting. The silent hisses and clashes of rock that accompanied the battles between the lizards. It began to grow louder, and Alan tensed up.
The noises continued to grow. Alan could [Sense] the lizards guarding the door move about restlessly as they noticed the sounds as well. They began moving erratically, gesturing wildly to each other, clearly nervous. Soon it sounded like a full-fledged battle and Alan resisted the urge to [Sense] out towards it, knowing he couldn't waste his MP here.
Suddenly, a group of foot soldier lizards burst through the entrance and ran up to the larger mass of brood soldiers. One lizard hastily came forward while waving its fingers in the air in an intricate pattern, frequently brushing its hand against its hind leg and making the occasional hissing noise. It was frantic.
It had taken Alan an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out the exact nature of how they communicated. It turned out the lizards had some sort of secretion gland in their back legs that they would rub their hands against and from there proceed to "draw" the scent through the air in specific patterns. The occasional hissing was almost secondary. At least that's how it seemed to Alan who had little else to do but spy on lizards for the past however many months. This was also a crucial part of his current plan.
His plan.
He found that most tribes had an area where they laid their eggs. It was usually deep into a territory, but he had become very proficient with [Hide] and with plenty of time on his hands it had been easy enough to sneak into one such region. He knew now that the creatures lived in their dark world using a combination of scent and sound to make out their surroundings. Luckily for him, [Hide] seemed to be very effective against their perception as long as he didn't make any overt noises and didn't get too close.
When he had stumbled upon his first incubation area, he had been overwhelmed by the sheer mass of eggs he could [Sense]. He hadn't wasted any time and stuffed as many as he could into his pouches. It would be a welcome change from lizard meat and mushrooms. He had filled up his sacks and left quickly thinking that he had been pretty good about leaving no trace of his visit behind. There were so many eggs, he just assumed that the lizards would not even notice the small amount he had taken.
He had been very wrong.
As he escaped with his eggs through the tunnels he started to hear strange noises. Curious he had turned around and snuck back to see what was going on. What he found had shocked him.
The lizard tribe was going ballistic after his visit. They were hissing in a way that he had never heard before and attacking each other, running off into the caves, and some even harming themselves. The brood warriors of the tribe in particular began crushing anything that moved, their power literally shaking the halls of the cave.
The earth rumbled with their anger and Alan had been notably thankful that he hadn't been caught in there. It was an easy decision to leave quickly and find a place to sleep very far away that night.
But the experience had given him something to work with.
He needed to get the lizards away from the door. His first thought was to steal eggs from the tribe guarding the doorway in an effort to make them go erratic and forget their stations. That had proven to be a dead end when he couldn't locate that particular tribe's nesting ground.
A minor setback for him, using his knowledge of the creatures he had come up with a new plan.
The first step had been to prowl through the darkness and kill a few foot soldiers from the tribe that guarded the giant door. An easy task for him now, he picked them off one by one and soon had enough for his purposes. He carefully cut out the glands from their legs, a small sticky sack that rested just behind their knees. He gathered twenty of these in total and combined, they gave off a sharp scent even to Alan's senses. From there he had made his way towards the nesting area of a different tribe nearby.
It had been pretty easy actually, though he had been understandably nervous about being caught after the previous reaction he had witnessed. He really didn't want to risk getting caught in an incubation room. But aside from a few lizards lingering on the edges of his perception, the area had been rather empty. Not one to pass up an opportunity, he made his move.
He quickly stole some eggs into his pouch to eat later; they had turned out to be surprisingly good compared to his usual fare. Then he began desecrating the place. He almost felt bad about it. He stomped on eggs, kicked them around, and in general tried to make a mess of the place. As he did so, he rubbed the glands over everything he could find. They were about the size of a large grape, and he squeezed them until a thick, viscous liquid dripped out. If he was correct, then the tribe would be able to make out the scent.
He didn't linger, not by a long shot. Finishing quickly he ran far far away.
There was admittedly a lot of guesswork in this plan, but he had really nothing to lose by trying. This was not the first time he had attempted to manipulate the creatures and failed.
Even separated by thousands of meters of dense rock, he imagined he could hear the uproar he left behind. Not daring to turn back he had picked up his pace heading even further away.
It had been several days since then and he was getting worried that this plan had failed as well. But finally, something seemed to be happening.
The brood lizards and shamans had all come forward now. Every lizard was gesturing wildly, and light but intense hissing filled the cavern. Their tongues flashed like lighting, and the sound of fighting began to grow louder. The gesturing and hissing began to become more and more panicked, more frantic, more violent.
It was getting louder and louder. Louder than anything he had heard since arriving in these tunnels. He listened to a distant rumbling roar that reverberated through his body. Sounds he had never heard from lizards before were echoing through the chamber. He felt sweat begin to drip down his forehead.
Suddenly one of the brood warriors slammed a large club into a foot soldier, instantly pulverizing it. This caused the rest of the lizards in the room to pause momentarily, and after a few quick gestures, the attacking warrior began heading towards the exit ignoring the rest. The rumbling of earth echoed ominously in the rocky cavern. Just as the brood warrior was about to reach the exit, a different group of lizards burst into the large cavern followed by a host of shamans.
Several enemy brood warriors quickly intercepted the one that had been heading towards the entrance. Alan could almost feel the power and impact of the quick struggle, and it set off a flurry of movement from every other creature in the cavern.
Alan's heart fell still as he sensed out towards the mass of reptiles below. The lizards typically engaged in smaller battles, he was starting to feel a bit uncertain about what he had unleashed.
As the two armies of brood warriors charged towards each other, the shamans on each side immediately began raising their hands in the process of activating their Skills. Quickly meeting in the center, the brood warriors clashed in a mighty torrent of teeth and claws and blood. It was raw and primitive and violent, but even that was secondary. Alan was focused on the shamans. He sensed the Mana in the room. One second it was a gentle stream leading towards the door, and in the next, the entirety of it suddenly plunged downwards into the earth, guided by at least forty different shamans. It was an invisible avalanche of power.
Alan pulled back his senses as his own Mana threatened to be sucked downwards. Then he felt something below him move, he felt it with something deep inside of him, something other than [Sense]. As a violent battle raged below, Alan felt the very bones of the earth start to tremble around him.